Interestingly, the following verse from the King James Bible is missing in nearly all modern translations and there are no archaic words or archaic expressions in it:
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” (1 John 5:7 KJV)
So what’s your beef now? You’re missing out on inspired scripture that isn’t even in “the Englyshe of the early 17th Century”.
1 John 5:7 is present in
all modern translations. What is missing is the additional words added: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
Here is the NET translator's note on that verse: Before τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ καὶ τὸ αἷμα (
to pneuma kai to hudōr kai to haima, “the Spirit and the water and the blood”) at the beginning of
v. 8, the
Textus Receptus (
TR) reads ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος, καὶ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα, καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι.
5:8 καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ (“in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.
5:8 And there are three that testify on earth”). This reading, the infamous
Comma Johanneum, has been known in the English-speaking world through the King James translation.
However, the evidence—both external and internal—is decidedly against its authenticity. For a detailed discussion, see
TCGNT 647-49. Our discussion will briefly address the external evidence.
This longer reading is found only in ten late mss, four of which have the words in a marginal note. These mss range in date from the 10th century (221) to the 18th (2318). They include the following (with dates in parentheses) 221 (X), 177 (XI), 88 (XII), 429 (XIV), 629 (XIV), 636 (XV), 61 (ca.1520), 918 (XVI), 2473 (1634), and 2318 (XVIII). There are minor variations among these codices. The earliest ms, codex 221, includes the reading in a marginal note, added sometime after the original composition. The oldest ms with the
Comma in its
text is from the 14th century (629), but the wording here departs from all the other mss in several places. The next oldest mss on behalf of the
Comma, 177 (11th century), 88 (12th), 429 (14th), and 636 (15th), also have the reading only as a marginal note (
v.l.). Codex 177’s
Comma is in a marginal note that must be dated after 1551, the year of the first Greek New Testament with verse numbers added. The remaining mss are from the 16th to 18th centuries. Thus, there is no sure evidence of this reading in any Greek ms until the 14th century (629), and that ms deviates from all others in its wording; the wording that matches what is found in the
TR was apparently composed after Erasmus’ Greek NT was published in 1516. Indeed, the
Comma appears in no Greek witness of any kind (either ms, patristic, or Greek translation of some other version) until a.d. 1215 (in a Greek translation of the Acts of the Lateran Council, a work originally written in Latin). This is all the more significant since many a Greek Father would have loved such a reading, for it so succinctly affirms the doctrine of the Trinity. The reading seems to have arisen in a fourth century Latin homily in which the text was allegorized to refer to members of the Trinity. From there, it made its way into copies of the Latin Vulgate, the text used by the Roman Catholic Church. The Trinitarian formula (the
Comma Johanneum) found a place in the third edition of Erasmus’ Greek NT (1522) because of pressure from the Catholic Church. After his first edition appeared, there arose such a furor over the absence of the
Comma that Erasmus needed to defend himself. He argued that he did not put in the
Comma because he found no Greek mss that included it. Once one was produced (codex 61, written in ca. 1520), Erasmus apparently felt obliged to include the reading. He became aware of this ms sometime between May of 1520 and September of 1521. In his annotations to his third edition he does not protest the rendering now in his text, as though it were made to order, but he does defend himself from the charge of indolence, noting that he had taken care to find whatever mss he could for the production of his text. In the final analysis, Erasmus probably altered the text because of politico-theologico-economic concerns: He did not want his reputation ruined, nor his
Novum Instrumentum to go unsold. Modern advocates of the
TR and KJV generally argue for the inclusion of the
Comma Johanneum on the basis of heretical motivation by scribes who did not include it. But these same scribes elsewhere include thoroughly orthodox readings—even in places where the
TR/Byzantine mss lack them. Further, these advocates argue theologically from the position of divine preservation: Since this verse is in the
TR, it must be original. (Of course, this approach is circular, presupposing as it does that the
TR = the original text.) In reality, the issue is history, not heresy: How can one argue that the
Comma Johanneum goes back to the original text yet does not appear until the 14th century in any Greek mss (and in a form significantly different from what is printed in the
TR; the wording of the
TR is not found in any Greek mss until the 16th century)? Such a stance does not do justice to the gospel: Faith must be rooted in history. Significantly, the German translation of Luther was based on Erasmus’ second edition (1519) and lacked the
Comma. But the KJV translators, basing their work principally on Theodore Beza’s 10th edition of the Greek NT (1598), a work which itself was fundamentally based on Erasmus’ third and later editions (and Stephanus’ editions), popularized the
Comma for the English-speaking world. Thus, the
Comma Johanneum has been a battleground for English-speaking Christians more than for others. For a recent discussion of the Comma Johanneum, see Rodrigo Galiza and John W. Reeve, “The Johannine
Comma (
1 John 5:7–8): The Status of Its Textual History and Theological Usage in English, Greek, and Latin,”
AUSS 56 (2018) 63–89.
Again, you are holding the wording of a single translation produced over 400 years ago to satisfy the demands of a secular king to justify his rule to be Scriptural truth. I prefer modern scholarship which is based on the best translation principles and using the best source documents. You will go to any length to justify your false basis of what is God's written word, but you're not impressing people the way that you think you are. You come across as someone with a closed mind, and I pity you for that.
The King James translation is NOT the word of God!!! It is a translation only and is clearly in error in a number of places.
